Maximum likelihood estimation of spatially varying coefficient models for large data with an application to real estate price prediction

Abstract

In regression models for spatial data, it is often assumed that the marginal effects of covariates on the response are constant over space. In practice, this assumption might often be questionable. In this article, we show how a Gaussian process-based spatially varying coefficient (SVC) model can be estimated using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). In addition, we present an approach that scales to large data by applying covariance tapering. We compare our methodology to existing methods such as a Bayesian approach using the stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) link, geographically weighted regression (GWR), and eigenvector spatial filtering (ESF) in both a simulation study and an application where the goal is to predict prices of real estate apartments in Switzerland. The results from both the simulation study and application show that the MLE approach results in increased predictive accuracy and more precise estimates. Since we use a model-based approach, we can also provide predictive variances. In contrast to existing model-based approaches, our method scales better to data where both the number of spatial points is large and the number of spatially varying covariates is moderately-sized, e.g., above ten.